


Our Perfect Disease

by meguri_aite



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M, exercise in writing around canon dialogue, i don't have a ship i have a fucking armada as it goes, in a way that is complete self-indulgence, miragen multishipping is a mess, what do you mean choose one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1468348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meguri_aite/pseuds/meguri_aite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Oha Asa did warn him that today wouldn’t bring him anything but ghosts of days gone by. But this was the thing with horoscopes – the knowledge of the future  was not the same as the weapon to change it; sometimes the only sensible thing to do was to accept the bad luck gracefully and float in its waters until they ran dry –  which they inevitably would, sooner or later, for such was the nature of life.</i>
</p><p>Midorima watches Touou vs Kaijou match, and Oha Asa is never wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Perfect Disease

Oha Asa did warn him that today wouldn’t bring him anything but ghosts of days gone by. But this was the thing with horoscopes – the knowledge of the future was not the same as the weapon to change it; sometimes the only sensible thing to do was to accept the bad luck gracefully and float in its waters until they ran dry – which they inevitably would, sooner or later, for such was the nature of life.

Which is how he finds himself standing under the bleachers before the Interhigh quarterfinals between Touou and Kaijou. He and Oha Asa both knew where he would find his ghosts today.

They don’t keep him waiting. Right with the tip-off, the forwards of the generation of miracles - and currently the aces of their respective teams - are locked in consecutive one-on-ones that make every other player on the court feel like support staff. And Midorima watches his Teikou days incarnate, resigned to his fate.

 

(“Aominecchi, one more time! Pass me the ball, will you?”

“Take it, if you think you can!”

“Oi, Mine-chin, Kise-chin, aren’t you done yet? If you keep at it, Aka-chin will make us practice extra.”

“Murasakibara is correct. Please keep in mind that this is a team practice.”

It was never as easy to feel like a total killjoy as when trying to stand in the way of Kise’s puppying around Aomine, but Midorima was already used to it. To some extent, his vice-captainship justified that, in his own eyes at least. They weren’t that far into the second year yet, and he already couldn’t even remember what happened on the court before Kise joined the team and Kise-on-Aomine action took all the spotlight.)

 

Kise loses the first one-on-one, and Midorima is quite certain it won’t be the last one to end in a similar fashion, but that doesn’t make it any boring to watch. Kise’s all intensity and drive, and Aomine openly mocks him – “You’re just as weak as you’ve always been!” – but you can see from the simmering anticipation on his face that he’s enjoying it. His moves are almost leisurely as he casually pushes the ball out of Kise’s hands; predictable, but still gratifying to watch. Touou gets the first basket.

Of course, Kise isn’t fazed by that. He starts casually copying the strongest moves of the different players on court – his teammates and opponents alike – which, naturally, doesn’t agree with Aomine. Sharing Kise’s attention with other people never sat well with him, and Aomine has always been very vocal about it. Of course, Kise, being his stupid self, has only ever seen it as a sign that he wasn’t doing well enough, and has pushed himself even harder to challenge Aomine – which, in its roundabout way, has always served the original purpose.

So it’s not surprising that the copied moves don’t really stop Aomine. He brushes off those in irritation, but the game doesn’t stay still: Kaijou’s captain makes a steal and shoots a timely, if ordinary, three-pointer.

“We’ll follow up on you as much as you need.”

The slightly disbelieving, apologetic expression Kise’s face takes on hearing his captain’s words makes Midorima clench his teeth. At the same time, but not for entirely the same reasons Aomine is giving Kise a piece of his mind about this little display of team spirit.

“I see, what a dependable senior,” he scoffs. “You can’t fight me yourself, so you’ll fight me all at once.”

Teamplay is a tricky matter for all of them, Midorima thinks, because nothing questions the concept quite as effectively as individual genius. Getting a number of individual geniuses to play for the same school had less to do with molding them into a team and more with stretching the meaning of the term to accommodate them. Of course, there was a common goal, and there was leadership, and there were definitely bonds between all of them. Oh yes. Chokeholds, even. With Teikou’s definition of team behind their backs, Midorima is fairly sure that none of the generation of miracles, even better-adjusted ones, feel like they quite know what they are doing with their new teams.

Kise, while not quite the same adept of the school of team spirit as Kuroko, still quite openly has his heart set on making teamplay work. Anyone watching this match can see that Kaijou players are in constant coordination and clearly center their strategy around supporting their ace. And anyone who knows where to look can see that Kise’s desire to be a part of the team in his stupid blond head translates into owing the team – owing them victory, owing them his best performance, owing them fulfillment of their expectations. How typically Kise.

Aomine wouldn’t have that. This one never tried to adjust, after all. So he taunts Kise with insults, throws offenses at him, and brings out the darkest, most uninhibited and instinctual responses from Kise.

“I don’t care what’s correct. I just want to beat you. I’m not mature enough to play basketball with reason over instinct,” Kise smiles like a knife, never taking his eyes off his opponent, and Midorima hates Aomine just a little.

The first quarter ends with Kaijou in the lead, as Kise stops Aomine’s freeform shot after they’ve danced circles around each other like two predators.

“I didn’t think you’d actually stop me.” If anything, Aomine looks pleased.

“Who do you think played and lost one-on-one to you every day?” Midorima can’t decide if he’s more frustrated or charmed by Kise’s childish pose, but then he hears, “I know you better than anyone else,” and frustration wins by a landslide.

Admittedly, it’s not very surprising that it was Aomine who Kise fixated on. Even if Murasakibara is the one with most impressive build for basketball, no one could compare to uncontrolled energy and natural flow of Aomine’s game. He was as flashy as he was effective, and more importantly, he beat Kise ten times out of ten. Not that any other member of the generation of miracles couldn’t do the same, seeing how Kise joined the party much, much later than the rest of them. If not for his obscene amounts of talent, trying to keep up with Teikou’s first string would have been a preposterous idea in the first place. The point was, Kise chose to fixate on Aomine from day one.

 

(Sometimes, sending one basketball after another into the hoop in the late hours of the evening practice, Midorima wondered if it was the position of Teikou’s ace that compelled Kise. It was the center of action, and got plenty of one-on-one stand-offs where things could get really physical, and really showy. Which was not to say Midorima ever felt like his own position was any less important to the team; on the contrary, it stood to reason that shooting guards scored most points by their attack, so perfecting three-pointers was the most efficient way to increase the score in your favour.

But in the same dark hours after practice when Midorima admitted to himself that probably Aomine’s play position had very little relevance to Kise’s fixation on him, he could also admit that being a shooting guard could feel – well, not exactly lonely, but peripheral. Solitary play, regardless of its practiced efficiency, didn’t look as appealing when the alternative was skin-on-skin clashes with Kise, who looked at you with his eyes on fire like you were a god among mortals.)

 

The second quarter is a mess right from the start. Kise keeps on coming against Aomine, and finds himself lacking every time. His play is getting more desperate and consequently sloppier, because he keeps tripping over his fascination with Aomine, effectively crippling his own attacks.

Aomine, as is his habit, gets progressively stronger as the game goes on. Normally that would happen because he can’t be bothered to play at full strength against just any opponent – they disappoint him too often. However, in the game against Kise that is not the case. Midorima was pretty convinced that one of the things that never made it to Kise’s head while he was too busy trailing after Aomine is that the latter never played against him half-heartedly, for the simple reason that he couldn’t afford any half-measures.

Which is why seeing Kise get stronger flares all his senses, and Aomine takes his game up another level. His concentration, his intensity, and above all, the pressure he puts on Kise is a near-tangible thing in the air.

“You said you know me better than anyone. Did you think it could not work the other way around?”

Aomine’s question startles Kise, and his attacks relentlessly crush every move Kise puts up against him. Midorima contemplates that a truth of a statement is such a fickle thing, easily rendered useless by individual perspective.

 

(Midorima found it deeply ironic that the only person who probably watched Kise as much as he did was Aomine. But unlike himself, Aomine did it openly, in blissful ignorance of everything but the gameplay, and Midorima occasionally envied him the simplicity of his motivation. Kise, naturally, noticed neither, too busy in pursuit of his own misery.)

 

“I’m your mark!” he snarls when Kise tries another of his copied moves on him. “Don’t think I’m like them.”

Not enough. Copying other people’s moves is not enough. What he’s doing now is not enough, not against him – Midorima feels like he can hear Kise’s inner monologue behind his pressured expression. And what he really wants to do is groan at the inevitability of what’s to follow: Kise will trip, fall, stand up, pulling himself up as long as he sees Aomine in front of him, who will be there and will be better – because he can and wants to be there, even if he himself doesn’t know why. And Kise’s face will get more determined and pretty with his every fall, because nothing lays bare his beauty quite like pain and striving.

 

(Midorima probably was the first to notice it, which isn’t something he took pride in. Because it was telling of the shameful amount of time he spent watching Kise, but unlike Aomine, when Midorima looked, he saw quite a lot.

No one could accuse Kise of not putting enough effort into practice, but with every step he made, he saw Aomine take ten more. It was rewarding, and it was painful. Midorima thought he could see how the novelty of not being the best, intertwined heavily with admiration, started to slowly give way to heartache. More often than not, Kise’s smile was a tad too bright, a shade too dazzling – just enough to conceal the fact that his ability to stand up after falling did not exactly equal to his immunity to rejection.

Kise’s head was a mess. When he wanted something, he wanted it wholly, and if he couldn’t have everything, he just started wanting more. To fill up the holes in his chest, to deal with loneliness in his misguided extraverted ways, and probably because he wasn’t used to rejection and didn’t know any better.

So when one day Kise came up to him, eyes light and hungry and limbs restless and jittery, Midorima couldn’t find it in himself to say no.)

 

Kaijou takes a time-out after Aomine almost single-handedly closes the score gap. When they come back, their play is off. Kise engages Aomine in one-on-ones as often as before, but after stand-offs so intense you’d expect the players to erupt into furious action at any second, Kise repeatedly passes the ball to his team members.

Aomine’s annoyance with such blatant lack of aggression on Kise’s side translates directly into basketballs he sends unerringly into the hoop. It’s obvious he doesn’t see why Kise would avoid a direct fight, especially when all other Kaijou players are clearly straining to keep the score difference to a minimum.

It is fairly unusual of him, Midorima thinks. Choosing to leave the fight to others, especially those who he perceives to be in need of his support, is not typical of Kise. Plus, even after passing the ball, he still follows Aomine around the court, running after him to keep him in his field of vision.

Midorima watches Kise’s shoulders heave with effort, deep breaths racking though his whole body, and a suspicion crawls up his spine. This strain is not proportional to the effort Kise is putting into the game, so why does it look like he’s giving it his all? What can possibly demand all of his focus, if it’s not –

He draws in a sharp breath and grips the edge of his seat painfully hard, then instantly relaxes his grip, remembering his taped fingers. This is it, this is exactly what is happening. Kise is trying to copy Aomine’s style in its entirety, and this whole spectacle of running around the court is him tuning his body in to the rhythms of his opponent.

 

(Midorima preferred to think of it as a surprise extension of Kise’s copycat tendencies, but the fact was, Kise loved nicking small accessories from people he got close with, and he got away with it gloriously. Because he had the audacity to wear them in public, thought Midorima fondly, and look so indecently good, the glamorous idiot, that no one thought further than complimenting him for his excellent fashion choices.

On the morning of the third night Kise spent in his bed, he noticed spare glasses Midorima kept at home and asked to borrow them. Midorima, feeling too boneless and dazed at the time, couldn’t quite verbalize why it would be a stupid idea, and later that week, when he saw Kise flaunt them in front of the whole school, embarrassment and satisfaction in equal proportions tied his tongue just as effectively. Unpunished, shameless, Kise did his thing, and Midorima just helplessly followed him with his eyes, as he always did.)

 

When he copies others’ moves, Kise always makes them look more beautiful and effortless than they originally were. It could be a Kise thing, Midorima smiles humourlessly, which comes from all the natural grace he has. But now he wonders if it isn’t also because none of these players he copied have been one of them, of generation of miracles. Thinking about just how Kise might look when channeling one of them makes Midorima’s vision darken. Thinking about how it could be Aomine he shapes himself into makes him clench his fists.

On the court, mere seconds before the buzzer announces the end of the second quarter, Kise stands paralyzed with the weight of what he wants to do, his expression an amalgam of resolve and heartache too painful to look at. Midorima turns away, not feeling ready to know what resolution to dethrone someone from their pedestal tastes like, not wanting to see what it costs.

 

(“I am absolute,” was the phrase every member of the Teikou team knew, and knew it to be true. For all their uncontested individual genius, none desired to question that maxim. It would have been funny just how much presence Akashi had, if it wasn’t a thing so solid it could drag you down on your knees with less than a word. In uncanny similarity to his point guard position, his leadership seemed to consist in involving himself as little as possible, while the world arranged itself around him to his liking. Or to the team’s benefit, as he claimed.

Midorima considered himself to be the person closest to Akashi, at least as much as the term could be applied to Akashi. However, getting close to someone who interacted with the world solely on condition of perfect obedience sounded more difficult in theory than in practice, Midorima had discovered. Behind the doors of the room where everyone knew basketball team’s captain and vice-captain to be playing shougi, it was really very straightforward – you just had to do what Akashi wanted you to. It was, after all, the most beneficial course, Akashi said, stroking Midorima’s face with his pale hands, tracing the tendons on his exposed throat.

Defying that that kind of supremacy was probably heretic, Midorima thought with disconcerting clarity, his skin prickling hot where shougi pieces were biting into his back.)

 

The third quarter has Kaijou pressuring Touou right from the start. The blues’ ace, however, is back in the game, and Midorima watches, transfixed, how Kise overtakes his opponents with a graceful ease unique to Aomine.

Granted, for now it’s just a set of separate moves, disjointed and still imperfect and therefore only effective against regular opponents. But Kise is learning with incredible speed, exceeding everyone’s already sky-high expectations and taking the definition of miracle to the levels that are truly terrifying. Oh, Kise. Is he even aware of what he is, Midorima wonders, and shakes his head.

Predictably, Kise is the one most aware of his own shortcomings, and does inhuman things to leave them behind. His face is almost trance-like empty while his whole body learns the lessons the hard way, right in the middle of a fight. Touou is visibly uncomfortable with this development, and their fear pushes them to foul Kise twice over the course of minutes.  

Kise makes his double shots with such elegant concentration that Midorima unwillingly begrudges him his effortless versatility all over again. You could have been a brilliant shooter, he thinks. You still can be a brilliant shooter, he amends, skin shivering at the truth of it. Midorima isn’t sure he wants to witness that just yet.

Meanwhile, someone on the court is getting really pissed about being left out from all the fun. Once the ball is back in play, Ahomine literally slaps it out of Kise’s hands and right into the hoop in one angry movement.

“Don’t drag your feet, Kise,” he growls. “If you don’t make it in time, it’s over. I’m not patient enough to wait till you are ready.”

Nothing sets his teeth on edge quite like being ignored by Kise, doesn’t it? For someone so unaware of anything but basketball Aomine surely behaves in a manner that makes it near impossible for Kise to ever get over him. And apparently, what Kise is trying to do – what Kise is already doing – didn’t pass by him. Midorima has a passing thought that probably it was Momoi-san who clued him in as usual, but then Kise takes up all his attention again.

Kise, who looks so awed and humbled by his team’s commitment to have his back at all times. Kise, who desperately wants to pay them back for it, the idiot. Kise, who does more improbable things than people dare dream of.

Kise, who finally takes the challenge and flows into what is unquestionably Aomine’s very own form.

“What if it’s that ‘me’ you are playing against?” he says, and Midorima closes his eyes because that hurts, it hurts much more than the ghosts are allowed to hurt.

 

(He knew Kise was restless, but he didn’t think anyone could do anything about it, since the source of Kise’s frustration was not about to have a life-changing epiphany any time soon. What he didn’t expect was to come to school to see Kise first in wristbands suspiciously similar to ones Kuroko wears, and later in hair clips that were so nonsensical they could have only come from Murasakibara’s collection and yet looked like designer stuff on Kise. Even knowing that to be a lie, Midorima forced himself to ignore it as something that belonged in the gray zone between coincidence and things that were not his business.

The day Kise showed up in what Midorima knew firsthand to be Akashi’s custom-made tie, he snapped. There was no mistaking the expensive black fabrics of the tie identical in design to Teikou’s uniform one that Akashi wore to school. The skin on his neck and wrists prickled with remembrance of its texture, and Midorima wanted to scratch at it until it bled. It was really hard to be rational about small things when he couldn’t make sense of the bigger picture, he found.

Later that day, he came to the shougi room to confront Akashi about it. In retrospect, he should have known better than trying to act on an impulse that relied on using “confront” and “Akashi” in the same sentence. He blamed the state of utter emotional agitation for clouding his judgment.

“Akashi, what does it mean?” he said, entering the room. Akashi was sitting contemplating the shougi board as he so often did and barely looked up at him.

“Sit, Shintarou.” He didn’t even have to gesture at the seat opposite him – Midorima was already headed there out of the force of habit. Belatedly, he thought he shouldn’t have, if he wanted to press his point, but by then he was already in his chair. Before he could open his mouth again, however, Akashi was already standing next to him – he had an uncanny ability to find ways to tower above even the tallest of people, and could be lightning fast when you least expected him to.

“Did you want to bring something to my attention, Shintarou?” Midorima felt Akashi’s fingers ghost along his jawline and tilt his head at an almost painful angle with the lightest of touches. He gulped, feeling the taut skin of his throat move, but then Akashi let go of him. Seeking a point of focus to steady himself, he stared at the shougi board. The wooden pieces refused to make sense, and he still saw Akashi out of the corner of his eye.

“Did you - ” his lips felt too dry. “Did you give Kise your tie?”

Akashi smiled near-indulgently.

“What, this one?” Midorima turned his head properly and saw Akashi pick the end of his tie by two fingers and look at it with exaggerated interest. It was exactly like the one he saw earlier today, and Midorima wanted to howl in frustration.

“You’ve been paying too much attention to Ryouta,” said Akashi with a small laugh and bent down to bite into his lower lip, as quick and menacing as a snake.)

 

Aomine’s eyes are wide open, and while he tries to come to terms with the reality of having to face a copy of himself on the court, Kise breaks past him. That seems to snap Aomine back into awareness, so with a cry he runs after Kise.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself!”

And Midorima can see it, because he has always paid too much attention to Kise, so he sees and he knows how it’s going to play out. And just like that, Aomine’s overly aggressive jump gets Kise fouled for the third time in this quarter, and before Touou realizes that their ace has gotten himself a fourth foul, before the two of them are back on their feet, Kise smiles a nasty smile and sends a ball right into the hoop in a perfect imitation of Aomine’s freeform shoot.

The audience roars with cheers. Aomine looks uncertain, for the lack of a better world, and Kise looks at him with sorrow people usually reserve for their greatest losses. The next thing they know, the ball is back in play, and in one fluid motion Kise makes a steal, while Aomine, the ace of generation of miracles, fumbles.

However, the sight of Kise heading to the opposite end of the court in the style and speed that are complete replica of his own seems to effectively shake Aomine out of his daze, and he runs, fast and then faster than ever before, and knocks the ball away just before Kise could slam it in. Disoriented, Kise falls down.

“You bother me the most,” Aomine glares at him from above, his every word a slap. “Don’t show any concern for me. If you can afford to do that, you should be coming at me like your life depends on it!”

Kise looks at him from under his hair, face cracking up in a smile.

“I knew you could do it,” he says, like a man vindicated, and Midorima shudders at the raw emotion in his voice. How does one get over bonds like that? How can Kise possibly get over him – no, how can any of them ever get over each other?

 

(Thankfully, there was only a month before graduation, and Midorima prayed to all the gods that it would bring him some peace of mind. Surely the generation of miracles and emotional cripples deserved some respite from itself?

And granted, a month later he stopped seeing his former teammates every day, and the knowledge that they would all to different high schools gave an interesting color to the future, but he felt like he graduated with his crutches by his side. After their presence in his everyday life stopped being a common fixture, against all reason his awareness of them didn’t lessen, and Midorima was fairly sure it was the same for the rest of them. If anything, it felt greater than before, senses tingling with prescience of future meetings.

They all went to different schools, and practiced with their new teams to beat their old teammates.)

 

The final quarter is a barrage. Nine minutes straight the aces constantly face each other, Aomine fuming in anger and Kise looking stretched a little too thin. They are running neck-and-neck, playing steal for a steal, basket for basket, in perfectly mirrored motions. It is incredible and outrageous.

The pace and the pressure of the game are thinning the air, and everyone in the stadium is struggling to breathe. The players of both teams are literally panting with the strain of trying to keep up with their aces, but none of them look ready to give up. Kaijou hasn’t been able to break from their ten-point difference, but they go all out trying to. Midorima looks at their faces and wonders if it’s Kise who inspires Kaijou to such heights, or vice versa. Probably both.

The precarious balance breaks a minute before the end of the game. One of the Touou players fumbles, and Kise steals the ball, fully aware that if he scores now, his team has a chance of making it. Touou knows it too, so Aomine’s there already, stopping him before he can reach the basket, and what follows next is probably the longest stand-off this match has seen. How do you outsmart yourself? How do you try to read each other, when you are two mirror images? Midorima doesn’t know if they will try to do that, or give up and just act on instinct, so he just watches.

Then, Kise jumps, sending himself up for what looks like a formless shoot, and Aomine jumps with him. The audience is raving, but before the players can slam into each other to grapple for the ball, Kise feints and with an easy sleight of hand sends a pass to his captain.

Or tries to, until Aomine spins right in the air and almost vengefully knocks the ball off course in a single, impossibly fast movement that costs Kaijou the game.

Kise stands shell-shocked, crushed, and Aomine turns to him to salt the earth.

“You’ve done pretty well until now, but in the end, you finally made a mistake. If it had been a one-on-one, you may have had a chance to win,” Aomine says. His face is thunderstorms. “Passing is something I would never do. My style of basketball is not designed to rely on teammates.”

What Midorima hears in it is ‘do not bring outsiders into that’. What Kise hears is probably the crashing of expectations he didn’t live up to, and it’s deafening him. These bells have always rung the clearest for him.

Kise stands frozen until his captain doesn’t knock some sense into his head, and quite literally, too. There is still about a minute of the play time left, and it won’t do to give up on the game before it’s over. And they don’t – Kaijou plays their hearts out as long as the clock is ticking, and Kise challenges Aomine for the last time mere seconds before the buzzer goes off. He’s obviously exhausted beyond measure, and there is no real need to fight for the last basket so hard, except to make a statement. Which he does.

“If there is any reason I lost, it’s simply because I wasn’t strong enough,” Kise says, gritting his teeth but looking straight at Aomine, who smiles at that.

“Don’t state the obvious,” he replies, oddly affectionate, and slams the ball right through the hoop.

The buzzer goes off. Kise falls. The game is over. Midorima walks away, wanting to be gone by the time everyone starts leaving the stalls, desperately in need of some fresh air to clear his head and sun to chase away the specters. Good thing he thought to put on his sunglasses today, he thinks, as he briskly walks down the empty hallways. At least until a familiar voice stops him in his tracks, making him jolt in surprise.

“Wasn’t it an amazing game, Shin-chan?” Takao is standing right there, leaning against the wall, and looks up at him with a smile.

“How did you know?”

“I knew there was no way you couldn’t come.” Takao says it airily, like one of his jokes, but his eyes are too shrewd as always. They always see too much, those point guards. But Takao’s seriousness quickly melts back into an amused expression. “Anyway, you should really stop thinking you’ve managed to disguise yourself like that,” he says, pointing at the sunglasses.

Midorima finds no fault with them and therefore fails to be amused. “It’s none of your concern.”

“Kise and Aomine really are monsters,” Takao says, unperturbed.

“Don’t tell me what I already know,” Midorima huffs lightly. He adjusts his glasses and gives Takao a long, contemplative look. “Besides, there is a monster standing right before your eyes,” he adds, feeling the weight of his every word.

Takao looks at him with inscrutable eyes, and smiles. “This winter should be fun,” he says cheekily.

Midorima lingers for one infinitesimal moment before nodding to himself and resuming his walk.

They have their new teams and new bonds now, and they will never be like Teikou. But maybe they don’t need to be.

And maybe they will never get over their Teikou bonds, either. And maybe that is okay, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> I can never do anything alone, so many thanks and credits go to [yourinsomnia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourinsomnia) for speedy beta and supportive squee, to [made-of-coffee](http://made-of-coffee.tumblr.com) for most constructively preventing this story from becoming two pages of meta, and NO THANKS AT ALL to [miwacarroll](http://miwacarroll.tumblr.com) for infecting me with a midokise bug in the first place. It seriously sucks!
> 
> the fic name is the title of a Wombats song, which has forever been my aokise anthem until my brain sustained a miragen multishipping trauma, so now it's a song for both.
> 
> (and as per usual, my apologies to friends who have to listen to my mad ravings at odd hours of the day. sadly, i can't promise it will get any better)


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